Windows* Store apps in the Microsoft design style are all the rage right now, but many of us have existing Desktop applications that are going to stay Desktop applications. From network access to user interface (UI) considerations, there are a host of reasons to update a Desktop application to extend its useful life while you explore your options with the Windows Store. But how to keep the application looking and acting up to date in the new modern application world? Fortunately, a host of new, useful features will help to make Windows 7 apps more at home on Windows 8, including touch application programming interfaces (APIs) and new storage features. This article provides some straightforward recommendations for updating your Desktop app for Windows 8, no matter if it is running on an actual desktop, an Ultrabook™ device, or a tablet.

Embrace Touch

One of the most visible changes in Windows 8 from the application developer’s point of view is the inclusion of touch. Windows Store apps are largely touch driven, and the same can be true of Desktop apps.

Working in Windows 8 on contemporary hardware is an interesting transition, as a touch-enabled laptop changes the way users work with the machine. Getting to the charms bar has a keyboard shortcut (Windows+C), for example, but very quickly, one becomes used to reaching up and swiping from the right edge of the screen with a quick flip of the thumb.

Desktop applications can embrace touch, as well. The best current example of this is Microsoft Office 2013, which has a Touch/Mouse Mode button at the top of the quick access toolbar. The usual Ribbon in Microsoft Office in Figure 1 is much better suited to a mouse.

Figure 1.The Mouse Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2013

With a change to Touch mode, the space between icons—and even the style of icons—changes dramatically. You can see that change in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The Touch Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2013

The difference is in the size guidelines. Microsoft recommends that to support touch interaction, touch points should be at least 50 pixels wide and high, with an 10-pixel gutter between targets. This guideline supports the majority of users in the majority of situations. So handling touch in an application is really a matter of managing the size of your targets, at least in Touch mode, like Microsoft Office has done.

Consider the Microsoft Design Style

Microsoft has developed a unique design style for Windows Store apps. In fact, the change in user interaction with Windows Store apps is arguably the largest single change in the new model. Applications that don’t use the style guidelines are rejected from the Windows Store.

A Desktop app isn’t expected to follow the Microsoft design style. Even if it is going into the Windows Store for marketing, there is no declaration that you have to use the new design style. In fact some of the design guidelines are pretty difficult to implement in a Desktop app.

That said, some tenants of the Microsoft design style make sense for a Desktop app. Revisiting the app layout and information architecture is worth considering. Reducing chrome and unnecessary UI elements is another good idea.

Clear Up Your Information Hierarchy Using typography to clearly show users the information hierarchy is a good idea no matter whether you are working in a Windows Store app, a Desktop app, or a website. Microsoft design style defines a typographic ramp to clearly define for the user what the most important thing on any given page is. The typographic ramp is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.The typographic ramp

While doing this, consider your ontology. Information architecture is key in application design, and using the typographic ramp makes you consider on what tier each piece of information in your application sits.

Reduce Chrome Increasing space between buttons often means reducing the number of buttons used in the interface. To really embrace touch, developers need to reduce the number of options in front of the user at any one time.

Desktop applications have too many buttons, anyway. Look at GIMP, in Figure 4.

Figure 4.Gimp and its buttons

Alternatively, look at Trimble SketchUp*, a Windows Store app, shown in Figure 5. Although it is unlikely that a desktop app could go to that level, considering streamlining of the UI is a good step toward a more Windows design style experience.

Figure 5.Trimble SketchUp*

Open Up Your Layout As discussed, making more space between your elements can make the whole app look better, take advantage of higher-resolution screens, and make touch-enabled screens a benefit to your users. The application cannot depend on touch because the mouse and keyboard are still in use and will be for a while. However, if you take touch into consideration while slimming up your information architecture and reducing unnecessary UI elements, you’ll find that your interface has a lot more space to play, and your users will be happier.

Head to the Clouds

Modern applications are connected. They use information from a variety of sources and are available anywhere, anytime, on any device. Cloud computing is information provided as a utility. That’s different from a hosted web application. Using service-based information access is the core of the modern application.

Modern Applications A modern application is one that uses cloud services to maintain the data and state of an application across devices. The promise is that no matter whether users are using a PC, a laptop, a tablet, or a phone, all of the data for the application remains in sync.

The modern application name was coined for tablet applications (especially Windows 8 Store apps), but the same term can apply to an existing desktop app. Storage can be maintained in a central system, and business logic can be moved to an online middleware system.

Use Windows Azure Windows Azure* storage is a great place to keep your stuff. You have three options for keeping data in Azure. SQL Database is exactly what it sounds like: a Microsoft SQL Server* database in the sky. Azure Tables are a NoSQL-style solution to storage. Just make a put call with data, and it’s there. Blob storage is the simplest of the three: It just stores big blocks of stuff and doesn’t care what it is.

SQL Database provides the kind of enterprise data management that corporate developers are used to. All of the transaction processing, schema management, and pinpoint control come with the massive scaling that accompanies the use of a cloud-hosted solution. In addition, SQL Federation provides easy movement of data between corporate SQL Server installations and the cloud-based SQL Database.

Azure Tables are unstructured blocks of data broken into three types: accounts, tables, and entities. The account represents an application. The table represents a logical grouping of data. An entity represents . . . well, anything. The application determines what goes in an entity. Figure 6 shows an example.

Figure 6.Azure Tables architecture

Tables can be a fantastic simple storage system for an application that just needs to keep some data in the cloud.

Move Business Logic to Services Another option toward making a desktop application more modern is simply moving business logic that can’t be easily built in a cross-platform way with JavaScript* to the cloud. Windows Azure is helpful for that, but there isn’t much of a platform for templating the services. Developers are a bit more on their own, but the benefit is that the logic doesn’t have to be written over and over for other platforms.

Manage the Life Cycle

Windows 8 allows for a new level of interaction between low-level operating system operations and desktop applications. Windows Store apps are totally managed by the operating system, which is not appropriate for a Desktop app. However, some level of interaction between the operating system and the application gives the user an experience of having things “taken care of,” and that is what we’re shooting for.

Access Logging Knowing when a user logs in can be a real boon for security and user experience alike, especially when you just want to let the user know that you are paying attention. That information is available to Desktop applications through User Access Logging in Windows 8.

Saving user access to a server is available in ual.h in the Windows software development kit (SDK). The application will need to store information about the IP address that is accessing the application in a data blob, and then pass it to the UalInstrument function, as the following code snippet shows:

The application can then use Windows Management Instrumentation to get information from the event log about user access at the server level and use it in the UI. For instance, Google Mail informs the user about access from other IP addresses right on the main mail page. This kind of information is good for both reference and security.

Machine State Management To a user, the machine appears to be on or off. Really, though, machines can be in any number of other states, and that number grew a lot in Windows 8. A Desktop application can use that information to its advantage when deciding how to manage its own state by checking SYSTEM_POWER_STATE. Some of the states a machine can be in are shown in Table 1.

Table 1.Machine states available in Windows 8

Machine State

User view

Power usage

S0

Working

Fully on, everything working

S1

Sleep

Appears off but quickly resumable

S2

Appears off and monitor off

S3

Appears off and hard drive stilled

S4

Hibernation

Memory saved to hard drive

S5

Soft off

Only resumable by LAN or power

G3

Mechanical off

Power off to all components

In Windows 8, hybrid shutdown (S4) stops user sessions, but the contents of kernel sessions are written to hard disk. This enables faster startup. You can use that fact to your advantage when checking power state on launch in Microsoft .NET and C++, although in JavaScript, that information isn’t yet available.

Got Games?

In the world of gaming, most of the improvements available in the Windows Store for Windows 8 are also available to Desktop apps. For example, Microsoft XAudio2 is a new set of sound APIs available as part of the Windows 8 SDK.

Games that are using Microsoft DirectSound* on the Windows Desktop platform should certainly look at XAudio2. XAudio2 now supports per-voice filtering and digital signal processing effects as well as submixing with voices. New audio formats are supported, and runtime decompression of compressed audio is finally available. This brings the Windows game sound up to par with the awesome video control in Microsoft DirectX*. Also, the XAudio2 APIs will not block the audio processing engine—a critical feature for the development of crash-free desktop games.

Microsoft XInput lets an application take input from the Xbox* controller from Windows. Using an Xbox controller in a Windows game takes user interaction to a whole new level. XInput has been enabling Xbox controllers for Windows since Windows XP and has a new 1.4 version for Windows 8. The new version supports upcoming features of the controller—force feedback, wireless, voice, plug-in devices, and navigation buttons. You can find XInput 1.4 in the Windows 8 SDK.

Use Sensors

Although sensors are more a mobile development feature, desktop apps run on Ultrabook and tablet devices, too. Desktop-style apps likely can be improved with some integration with the sensor array in an Ultrabook device, laptop, or tablet.

Orientation. General sensor for figuring out how the user is viewing the device

Of course, not all sensors are available on all devices, so take care. That said, integration with the machine at the sensor level gives the user a much more modern experience.

Do Data Differently

Data access is a moving target in modern applications. Windows Store apps can’t directly connect to most databases and require use of a service layer for most storage options. Big data and huge-scale reporting are changing the face of both storage and access. The Windows API is changing a bit to support this movement in access options.

Compression API Moving data into and out of applications is time-consuming and expensive. Use of compression can mitigate these problems, and the Compression API is the first low-level toolset for compression in Windows. It supports:

MSZIP

XPRESS

XPRESS_HUFF

LZMS

Storage Management API In previous versions of Windows, the Virtual Disk Service supported a subset of storage options. In Windows 8, the Storage Management API provides an interface to disks and disk-like units that implement a storage management provider. Windows PowerShell* is really the target for the Storage Management API, but if an application is file-centric and focused on the enterprise, there will still be a use for the interface.

Conclusion

Existing Desktop apps do have a place in the new Windows 8 ecosystem. With a little updating for touch interaction, cloud storage, and new user interaction APIs, existing apps are ready for listing in the Windows Store. Get the Windows App Certification Kit today, run your existing Desktop app through it, and see what has to change. Then, implement the recommendations above to be ready for Windows 8!

About the Author

In 1992, Bill Sempf was working as a systems administrator for The Ohio State University and formalized his career-long association with internetworking. While working for one of the first ISPs in Columbus, Ohio, in 1995, he built the second major web-based shopping center, Americash Mall, using Adobe ColdFusion* and Oracle. Bill’s focus started to turn to security around the turn of the century. Internet-driven viruses were becoming the norm by this time, and applications were susceptible to attack like never before. In 2003, Bill wrote the security and deployment chapters of the often-referenced Professional ASP.NET Web Services for Wrox and began his career in pen testing and threat modeling with a web services analysis for the State of Ohio. Currently, Bill is working as a security-minded software architect specializing in the Microsoft space. He has recently designed a global architecture for a telecommunications web portal, modeled threats for a global travel provider, and provided identity policy and governance for the State of Ohio. In addition, he is actively publishing, with the latest being Windows 8 Application Development with HTML5 for Dummies.

Intel, the Intel logo, and Ultrabook are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the US and/or other countries.